GAME OVER, SHVARTS

UPDATE, April 22, 2008: Yale Pulls Student's 'Abortion Art' Project From Exhibit Opening

Senior Aliza Shvarts' controversial piece still could be included in the student show, which runs through May 1, Yale officials indicated.

"Her exhibit is not on display, but it's unresolved as to whether it will be," said Yale spokesman Tom Conroy, suggesting discussions were in progress between the university and Shvarts.

Discussions?

This is ridiculous. Maybe Jimmy Carter can help resolve the matter.

Shvarts kept mum through the weekend and early this week despite the school's calls for her to confess that she lied in describing how she constructed the project. She didn't respond to repeated calls or e-mails requesting comment.

Yale officials warned that unless the art major agreed to say in writing that she hadn't told the truth about artificially inseminating herself and then taking herbal drugs to try to induce miscarriages, they'd yank her piece from the student exhibit, which opened Tuesday morning and closes May 1.

Does this mean she gets an A on her project?
___________________

UPDATE, April 21, 2008: Yale to Cancel Controversial 'Abortion Art' Exhibit Unless Student Admits It's Fiction
________________

Yale student Aliza Shvarts insists that she really did inseminate herself and then abort her pregnancies as part of her senior art project.

A Yale University student who touched off a campus firestorm with her shocking claims of repeatedly artificially inseminating herself and then inducing miscarriages as part of an art project stood by her story Friday, despite statements from the university that her version of events is "creative fiction."

In a guest column that ran in Friday's Yale Daily News — which first reported her claims in Thursday's edition — senior art major Aliza Shvarts maintained that she had conducted artificial inseminations and carried out what she characterized as self-induced miscarriage procedures, though she never actually knew whether she was pregnant.

"For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages," Shvarts wrote in Friday's column. "Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization.

"On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding. ... Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there (sic) was ever a fertilized ovum or not.

"The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading."

She reiterated that the display, which she herself drew attention to with a press release circulated Wednesday, was meant to provoke discussion about the link between art and the human body.

"This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body," she wrote.

..."The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body," Helaine S. Klasky, associate dean and vice president for public affairs at Yale, said in the statement sent to FOXNews.com.

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art."

Shvarts' campus phone has been disconnected, and she did not respond to e-mailed requests for an interview. While she did not explicitly mention Yale officials' version of events in her Friday column, Klasky told various media that Shvarts had indicated what she would do if the university contended her story was false.

"She said if Yale puts out a statement saying she did not do this, she would say Yale was doing that to protect its reputation," Klasky told The Associated Press.

The public affairs official also wrote an e-mail to the Yale Daily News late Thursday night saying that Shvarts "denial is part of her performance. We are disappointed that she would deliberately lie to the press in the name of art.”

Shvarts shot back at the school, claiming her project was “university sanctioned,” according to the paper.

“I’m not going to absolve them by saying it was some sort of hoax when it wasn’t,” she told the Daily News. “I started out with the university on board with what I was doing, and because of the media frenzy they’ve been trying to dissociate with me. Ultimately I want to get back to a point where they renew their support.”

Shvarts said her project had the backing of Yale's Davenport College Dean Craig Harwood, as well as at least two faculty members within the School of Art.

Blah, blah, blah.

Pull the curtain on this one. The performance is over.

My review: Despicable. GAME OVER, SHVARTS.

____________________

Read Shvarts' column in the Yale Daily News.